A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

In the 1960s the government finally saw that Antigua with its
colonial architecture had major tourism potential, and went to
work reconstructing the fallen walls. The restoration was the pride
of the entire country until 1976 when an earthquake – worse than
any other, and centered almost precisely at Antigua – flattened the
work of men again.
The quake, in one anecdote, flattened a convent while the
sisters were at prayer. Rescue teams, in the face of the
catastrophe, decided to leave them where they lay, under the
massive slabs.
(Claustrophobia in Spanish means, literally, fear of the
cloister. The old tales of Antigua were rife with the sufferings of
young girls behind the convent walls. The terramoto gives the
pun a third, insidious interpretation.)
The quake was not merely a setback for tourism, however; it
demolished the country's frail economy as well. Inflation
skyrocketed. There was not enough money to get the country
back on its feet. Guatemala turned, as it always must, to another
strongman.
*
At the Cathedral of San Francisco in Antigua, besides an
interesting crucified Christ made of plaster of ground corn cob, is
the tomb of Father Pedro de Bethancourt.
(Also, the grave of the wife of the man who discovered
California, but she has been punished enough.)
Plastered all around the tomb, higher up along the stone
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